Need Me (Broke and Beautiful #2)(54)

He didn’t answer. Just looked at her as though the earth was crumbling underneath her feet but his hands were tied behind his back, preventing him from reaching out to help her. Or maybe the earth really was crumbling beneath her feet. That’s what it felt like. It matched the horrible crumbling taking place inside her. No, please. Why wouldn’t he answer her?

“Yes or no, Ben?” she whispered.

When he nodded a single time, a rushing sound started in her ears, as if she’d been pulled under a tidal wave. It wasn’t just the knowledge that Ben had written a letter to the dean about her, had written down those terrible lies on paper. That alone would have been enough to kick her in the teeth. It was more, though. Her parents had worked so hard to send her to New York, to pay what they could while she pursued her dreams. She’d let them down. Oh God, she could face almost anything except that.

Vaguely, she registered Elmer coming to stand behind her. Ben bared his teeth at her oldest friend. All hell broke loose then. Elmer laid a comforting hand on her shoulder that she immediately wanted to fling off. She didn’t want comfort. She wanted the pain to kill her on the spot so she wouldn’t have to deal with it.

“If you don’t take your f*cking hands off her,” Ben grated, “I will rip them off.”

“You’re not in a position to be issuing demands, bro,” Elmer returned. “I’ll be here to pick up the pieces when you leave. In fact, we already called you a cab.”

Words still hanging in the air, Ben moved. It happened so fast that Honey was snapped out of her stupor. One minute Elmer was standing beside her, the next he was lying on the ground, clutching his jaw. The boy who’d never hurt her a day in her life felled by the man who’d just shattered her heart? Unacceptable. Honey held up a hand to stay her approaching father and rounded on Ben, who looked as if he was considering going for round two with Elmer. When she blocked Ben’s view of Elmer, he looked up at her, his eyes clouding over.

“Get in that cab. Get on an airplane. And get the hell out of Kentucky.” She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t. Not in front of him. Or anyone. “God, I hope I never see you again.”

He took a step toward her, shaking his head. “I’m going to make this right. You don’t understand—”

“Looks like you wrote me something after all for my birthday.” She skirted past him and opened the cab door. “Wasn’t really what I had in mind, but that’ll teach me to be careful what I wish for.”

His hand clutched at his stomach a moment before he straightened. “Once I fix this, you’ll have to listen to me. It’s not what you think.”

When a tiny part of her hoped that was true, Honey knew she had to end this once and for all. No more hope. No more maybes. Since meeting Ben, she’d had enough of those to last her a lifetime. She got right in his face. “There is nothing you can say, nothing you can fix, to make this better. You’ve embarrassed me in front of my family. You’ve hurt me, Ben. So bad that it’s not repairable. Every time I think of you, I’ll think of the words you wrote. I’ll never see anything else. Give up.”

He looked hollow, but she didn’t have it in her to care. Not when she was hollow, too. He swept a glance over her before falling heavily into the backseat of the cab, wincing when Honey slammed the door. His eyes were solemn as they watched her through the glass, like he wanted to communicate something to her, but she turned away and allowed her father to toss Ben’s carry-on sized suitcase unceremoniously into the trunk. As the cab reversed down her driveway, she refused to look back.





Chapter 19



BEN HATED THE fact that it was sunny when he landed in New York. He wanted thunder, hail, and darkness. Fuck light and warmth, he wanted ice on the sidewalks. Gloom. Weather that signaled the Apocalypse. Wasn’t that what this was? Too much. He’d been feeling far too much to sit in the tiny airplane seat for three hours. Rage, self-disgust, loss . . . so much loss. It didn’t seem possible that he was leaving Honey one place and going to another. The girl he’d slept beside last night, feeling each of her breaths, smelling her hair . . . she should be with him always. She wasn’t, though. She was so far from being with him that last night seemed like a dream. A perfect, golden-edged dream that one stupid action had burned to a cinder.

The second his flight landed, people around him began chatting excitedly into their cell phones. Making plans. He had no plans beyond getting to the school. After that, he had nothing. There was nothing beyond the meeting he had with Dean Mahoney one hour from now. Needing the situation handled immediately, he’d called the man from the airport to schedule it. And he just needed to get there and repair what he’d done so he could breathe. Until he knew he hadn’t ruined her future with his past insecurities, he would just move on autopilot. Otherwise he might bum-rush the nearest ticket counter and buy a return ticket to Kentucky.

Leaving her standing there with tears in her eyes had been the shittiest thing he’d ever experienced, followed closely by the betrayal on her face when he’d walked into the Longshoreman with another woman. Jesus, how many times had he hurt her? Enough. Enough times that he knew she’d meant what she’d said before slamming the door of the cab. Honey was done. Wanted him out of her life. Fuck, he didn’t blame her. Maybe he didn’t know how to be with someone without inflicting pain on them. You certainly are your father’s son. A chip off the old block. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. On and on the clichés went in his head, until he wanted to slam it against the tray table attached to the seat in front of him.